The Children of the Cost, Quality, and Outcomes Study Go To School, Executive Summary

The children of the cost, quality, and outcomes study go to school: Executive summary. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS W E WOULD LIKE TO THANK the directors, principals, administrators, and teachers who graciously gave their time to this study and let us visit their child care centers, schools, and classrooms. We would also like to thank the children and families who participated in this study. We have been very lucky to have a group of dedicated families who have been willing to stay with our project throughout the study and who have put so much effort into this project over the years. This study would not have been possible without their help. I N RECENT YEARS there has been increasing interest in the effects of preschool experi-ences—especially child care—on children's later performance in school. A substantial majority of preschoolers now participate in some form of child care before coming was designed in part to examine the influence of typical center-based child care on children's development during their preschool years and then subsequently as they moved into the formal elementary education system. We have now followed these children through the end of second grade, four years after our initial contact with them when they were nearing the end of their next-to-last year in child care. The overall findings can be summarized in a few broad statements about the influence of center-based child care in America on children. s High quality child care is an important element in achieving the national goal of having all children ready for school. Our findings showed that the quality of children's experiences in typical child care centers affects their development while they are in child care and their readiness for school. Children who attended higher quality child care centers performed better on measures of both cogni-tive skills (e.g., math and language abilities) and social skills (e.g., interactions with peers, problem behaviors) in child care and through the transition into school. Further, this influence of child care quality was important for children from a wide range of family backgrounds. Executive Summary s High quality child care continues to positively predict children's performance well into their school careers. Our longitudinal analysis of children's performance indicated that the quality of child care experienced by children before they entered school continued to affect their development at least through kindergarten and in many cases through the end of second grade. Child care quality was related …